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Gruppe 9
Language of instruction: English
Aims
- 1) To see all human struggles as inherently intersectional, and intersectoral and connect this to the need for devising interdisciplinary approaches.
- 2) To develop critical and historical insights into conditions that shape social stratification and identity formation.
- 3) To understand social work's limitations and transformative potential in a neoliberal world order.
Seminar Description/Contents
The seminar uses various media generated by queer, trans, and feminist thinkers- often from racialized backgrounds to argue for a broader understanding of gender in politics. Let us suppose, that in a Utopic society, we would not care for what Gender is assigned to a person, who desires whom, or grade them based on their ability, physical attributes, or capacity to reproduce- but would people have enough food to eat in this society? Would they have access to land and dignified jobs? The list of such questions is endless because we inherit a world that is deeply unequal. It is not enough for mere gender to go away or transform to better the human condition.Instead, frameworks such as intersectionality can be foundational in positing that gender and all conditions that enforce it and vice versa must go. This can be a bleak prospect for workers who are just beginning to address gender and other factors that reify it at work. To remedy it, the seminar draws upon works that seek to rescue joy for such work/lives, invert power, subvert expectations, or use them to benefit as a strategy to bring transformations in their own ways in contexts that are pre-decided for us .
Requirements: Anyone who is interested in gender. The seminar provides a basic introduction to the gendered understanding of various social identities that are subject to social work and by extension our own gendered-social selves as social workers.
Didactics
The seminar's discursive classroom is crucial to its delivery. It encourages a deeper, more personalized understanding of gender- that not only looks at it as a social and analytical category but also serves as a place for reflecting on the journeys social workers take vis a vis their own gendered interactions and positionalities. The discursive element also facilitates horizontal learning around social identities and structural privileges, given that academia tends to exacerbate these in classroom settings. The final presentation can be submitted in multiple formats to be more inclusive of neurodiverse needs. Students also have the option to choose their own resources that they find resonant for the assessments that are discussed prior with the instructor.
Examination (ungraded): Prescribed word limit for seminar paper submission – not more than 3000 words could take the form of a critical film or book review an argumentative essay or a presentation (could take forms of digital essay, spoken word performance, or viva voce - to be decided between the instructor and students).
Bibliography
Recommended readings:
No List Of Demands: Queer And Trans Organizing In Monterrey, The Funambulist (January-February 2023)
Dhrubo Jyoti, 'A Letter to My Lover(s),' in Eleven Ways to Love (Penguin Random House: 2018) 3-30
Judith Butler, 'Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia' in Robert Goodling-Williams (ed.) Reading Rodney King/reading Urban Uprising (Routledge 1993) 15-23.
Crenshaw, Kimberle, 'Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics' (1989) The University of Chicago Legal Forum, 139-167.
Combahee River Collective, 'The Combahee River Collective Statement' in Barbara Smith (ed.) Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press 1983) 272-283 at http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee .html.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Five Sexes and Five Sexes Revisited
Urmila Pawar, ”The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman's Memoirs” TRANSLATED BY MAYA PANDIT (Columbia University Press 2009)
Temsula Ao's 'The Night,
Speech by Sojourner Truth
Akhil Kang, 'Brahmin Men who love to Eat A**', Decolonizing Sexualities Network
Ruth Wilson Gilmore 'Is Prison Necessary?' New York Times (2019)
Akunth, A. (2019, September 1). We decided to remain in the shadows so you could shine brighter
Butalia, Urvashi. 2011. Mona's Story. GRANTA. https://granta.com/monas-story/
Revathi, A. 2010. The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story. New Delhi: Penguin
Additional Reference:
Online Resources: Queer Muslim Project, Chinky Homo Project, and Dalit Queer Project
Films: The Way He Looks (2014), And Then We Danced (2019), Devi: Goddess (Short 2017), Bottoms (2023)
Magazines: Awham, Shuddhashar, Kohl Journal, Missy
Books: Hansda Sowendra Shekhar- The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories, My Father's Garden; Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde, Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y Davis, A History of My Brief Body by Billy Rae-Belcourt, Joshua Whitehead- Making Love with The Land, The hidden injuries of class by Jonathan Cobb and Richard Sennet, Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara, The People Who Report More Stress- Alejandro Varela
Anthologies: This Bridge Called My Back, Movements and Moments, Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets
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